Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

The following op-ed appeared August 2 in the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

It is not surprising that the proposed Windy Acres Wind Farm project in the Town of Sherman has become a highly emotional debate. However, as a citizen, taxpayer and small business owner in the Town of Sherman, I am concerned about the vast amount of misleading information that is being circulated throughout our community.

We’ve been barraged with flyers of burning wind turbines, yet the likelihood of this occurring is ...

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On Sunday, the Des Moines (Iowa) Register newspaper endorsed an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), saying America "needs to encourage clean energy development."

Noting that Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign has called for an end to the PTC as part of an effort to provide a "level playing field" for various energy sources, the Register commented:

"The 'level playing field' argument is fair, but only as far as it goes. The playing field is uneven now in large part because of more than a century of investment in exploration and infrastructure made by consumers who pay utility bills to companies that use coal, ...

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South Dakota Congresswoman Kristi Noem (R) is scheduled to visit Mitchell (S.D.) Technical Institute (MTI) this afternoon to tour the facility, which offers wind technician training, and host a roundtable discussion on the impending expiration of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), according to the Mitchell Daily Republic newspaper.

Noem, who is in her first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a leading supporter of extending the PTC, and recently spearheaded a letter to House leadership from 18 freshman Representatives, 16 of them Republicans, urging that it be extended.  Both South ...

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The following was posted as a response to a question about the Production Tax Credit on the National Journal Energy Experts blog.

As I'm sure most readers know by now, the wind energy production tax credit (PTC) advanced last Thursday, winning strong bipartisan support from the Senate Finance Committee.

We applaud the Committee for this act of leadership to move critical policies forward in a difficult environment. This was an extremely important step to provide critical certainty to keep people at work in wind energy manufacturing and construction.

The Committee's action also exemplifies one of the key reasons why the PTC ...

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Washington, D.C, Aug. 2 – Extension of critical tax relief to save 37,000 jobs in wind energy and continue growing U.S. manufacturing advanced in the Senate Finance Committee today with strong bipartisan support.

By an overwhelming bipartisan margin of 19-5, the Committee passed an extenders package that included an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC). On critical amendment votes, all the Democratic members and GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) supported the extension of the PTC.

Also in the Committee's markup is an extension of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which provides an incentive for the development of offshore and community wind projects.

"We applaud the committee for this act of ...

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Yesterday's big news--that the Senate Finance Committee had approved an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC)--was preceded by yet another of the many bipartisan initiatives that have distinguished the PTC, even in the intensely partisan atmosphere of this Presidential election year.

On Wednesday, six Senators--three Republicans and three Democrats--wrote to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee to urge that the PTC extension be included in the tax extenders bill being considered.  Signers of the letter included Michael Bennet (D-Colo), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and John Boozman (R-Ark.). If the tax credit is not extended soon, they said, thousands of jobs associated with wind ...

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The effect on America's wind energy industry of allowing the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) to expire could be "devastating," according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Jon Wellinghoff.

Wellinghoff's comment came in response to a question from The Hill newspaper at a Washington, D.C., energy conference Tuesday.  The wind industry, like any other energy industry, needs "some level of certainty" about tax policy in order to be able to make business plans, and the PTC should not be subject to an "arbitrary and immediate cutoff."

The PTC provides an income tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of electricity production from utility-scale wind turbines. It is set to expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress ...

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The following article is one in a series of case studies included in AWEA's recently published Small Wind Turbine Market Report Year End 2011.

As the United States dramatically expands wind energy deployment, the industry is challenged with developing a skilled workforce to support it. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a report describing a 20% wind energy future by 2030, which noted that 500,000 new annual full-time equivalent jobs would be supported. DOE's Wind for Schools project focuses on K-12 and university educators and students to counter the trend of reduced numbers of U.S. students entering science and ...

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A recent report commissioned by the Western Governors’ Association makes a solid case for implementing a number of transmission system operating reforms that will facilitate wind integration and generally make the system operate more efficiently in the Western U.S.

The report was prepared by the Regulatory Assistance Project, and it explores ways to integrate renewable energy sources in the most cost-effective manner. The report tackles many issues important to wind power, comprehensively presenting the benefits of

• sub-hourly generation dispatch and transmission scheduling,
• an Energy Imbalance Market,
• dynamic transfers,
• improving wind and solar energy forecasting,
• ...

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Yesterday, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) delivered the 13th in his series of speeches on the federal wind energy production tax credit (PTC), looking at its impact on the state of Idaho.

His remarks in part:

"In 2011, Idaho's installed wind capacity grew by nearly 75 percent. That growth created hundreds of temporary construction jobs as well as permanent jobs in operation and maintenance of those facilities.  Another number, right now Idaho wind farms provide enough power for nearly 160,000 homes without releasing the nearly 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide that traditional power sources would. 

"Wind supports close to 500 jobs in the state of Idaho--jobs that wouldn't exist if the wind industry hadn't been enticed to invest in Idaho by the ...

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